Blackbeard

by Craig Cabell

  Blackbeard approached Cummins Point from the south in the afternoon of 22 May 1718; part of a flotilla of four vessels, his flagship being the largest. Because of the bank of sand that formed a natural barrier across much of the harbour’s mouth, known as the Charles Town Bar some 3 miles from the town itself, the Queen Anne’ s Revenge would have encountered some difficulty getting close enough to the town to really become a major threat. There were ways in but as events transpired, Blackbeard made no attempt to venture closer to the town. Besides, he was not there to attack. Of all the crimes that pirates had achieved throughout history, few could claim to have blockaded a port and brought its trade to a standstill.

  The threat was not so much to the town but to any ship trying to enter or leave the harbour. They would first of all have to pass the large pirate warship, bristling with guns, gun ports open and ready. A terrifying sight indeed.

  To make matters worse, Charles Town was undefended in terms of warships. New York had a warship to protect it; Williamsburg had a warship for protection; Charles Town had no such defence. The walls that protected the town were in the process of being shifted to make way for the growing population, and while the cannon mounted on the bastions could just reach the other side of the Cooper River, they were utterly useless against Blackbeard and his fleet 3 miles downstream.

  There is no record that the Queen Anne’ s Revenge ever entered the harbour at Charles Town. Blackbeard threatened to enter the town and bombard it if his demands weren’t met but this never actually took place. For him to enter the harbour and begin shooting would have been tactically unsound. Once the alarm had been raised the Royal Navy could have blockaded the mouth of the harbour, trapping the pirate and then taken their time blasting him to bits.

  The harbour itself was 1.5 miles across and 5 miles long with Charles Town sitting at one end on the peninsula and the mouth of the harbour facing the open Atlantic. The harbour’s main anchorage lay at the point where the two rivers converged but getting to this point could be treacherous. Running from the anchorage to the open sea were a series of deep-water channels divided by sandbanks and shoals that from time to time shifted under the force of winter storms or hurricanes that roared in from the Atlantic. Large ships such as the Queen Anne’s Revenge could enter the harbour and sail along the deep-water channels but they needed to have a local pilot thoroughly familiar with these shifting shoals and channels.

  Of the vessels with him that made up the rest of his flotilla, all three were sloops. The first was the Revenge, formally Stede Bonnet’s ship and more than likely commanded by Captain Richards. The second would have been the newly-acquired Adventure, formerly commanded by David Herriot and now commanded by Israel Hands. The identity of the last sloop is not known for certain.132

  These vessels most probably spread themselves across the mouth of the harbour. They were in prime positions to both escape if a fleet of warships appeared and to block transport into and out of the harbour itself. As events were to transpire, sailing into the harbour became unnecessary. An alternative was about to fall into Blackbeard’s lap.

  Blockading a small city was a daring move by Blackbeard. Few other pirates had the audacity to carry out this action. By doing this, Blackbeard could hold the town to ransom, capture any ship he liked that was either leaving the harbour or entering and plunder them for riches. Also this blockade would see Blackbeard spreading his complete control from that of his own ship and crew, beyond the little flotilla now to a town of more than 5,000 people, all of whom would be completely at his mercy. Once he began communication with the town he said that all he came for was a chest of medicine. This has been well-documented : ‘If I did not immediately send them a chest of medicines.’133

  Back in Virginia, Spotswood had been hearing the news about Blackbeard’s actions. Trade between the colonies was starting to suffer because of the pirate. He had not yet heard of the blockade of Charles Town but he would soon enough.

  Robert Johnson, Governor of South Carolina, provides us with a narrative of sorts about what went on during those dark days. Disturbed by the presence of so many pirate ships and by the rising level of panic surging through the local population, he wrote an urgent letter to the Council of Trade and Plantations in London which would have arrived long after the blockade was over but one which conveyed his anxieties.134

  When the little flotilla arrived off the Charles Town Bar the pilot vessel headed out to meet them as they rode the swell off Sullivan’s Island. There was nothing uncommon about this. They would have been used to small fleets of ships arriving ready to take their cargo into the harbour. The pilot vessel was especially needed to guide larger vessels over the Bar, down one of the deep channels into the main anchorage. It was perfectly normal. Of course, as the pilot boat drew near, the realisation of the situation struck, but by then, it was too late. Once the pilot had climbed up onto the deck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge he would have come face to face with the tall, foreboding heavily-armed English pirate with the black flowing beard. Escape was impossible for the unsuspecting pilot and his crew and they were to become the first victims of the blockade – prisoners in the dark hold of the pirate flagship, but they would not be alone for long. Indeed, Governor Johnson confirmed in his letter that the pilot was Blackbeard’s first victim, ‘...appeared in sight of the Town tooke our pilot boat’.135

  According to Governor Johnson’s letter the next victim was the ship Crowley. This, under the command of Captain Clark, was proceeding over the Bar, carrying passengers: ‘It is not unreasonable to assume that her commander, Captain Clark, had followed the pilot boat out of the harbour and was captured within minutes of his guide.’136

  This first important catch of the blockade presented Blackbeard with some interesting opportunities as it had many leading citizens from Charles Town aboard.137 The first of those opportunities was the possession and baggage of all the passengers which the pirates rifled through in quick order. Another opportunity was the hold of the Crowley which was packed with rice. Then, of course, there was the value of keeping the passengers as hostages. Blackbeard read the ship’s papers and discovered one of the passengers was Samuel Wragg, a prominent wealthy man in Charles Town and a member of the council. He was travelling with his young son William so this provided Blackbeard with even more opportunity. Despite the fearsome reputation pirates often had, it appears that none of these passengers were physically harmed. This shows the control that Blackbeard had over his crew but also a man at the height of his power, having control over his prisoners, more than 300 pirates spread out in his fleet and of course the poor citizens of Charles Town.

  The capture of the Crowley must have been towards the end of the day as no alarm had yet been raised by fishermen or anyone on the nearest shore. However, when dawn rose the following day the people of Charles Town would soon discover their city was in deep trouble.

  That following day the haul was even better. According to Governor Johnson, ‘8 or 9 sail with severall [sic] of the best inhabitants of this place’ were to fall victim to the plundering designs of the pirates. The first victim of the new day was a small outbound ship, commanded by Captain Craigh also, like the Crowley, starting its long journey to London. As the pilot was nowhere to be found that morning, we can assume that Captain Craigh’s concentration would have been on navigating the Bar by himself while quite possibly cursing the pilot’s absence. He would have had no time to wonder about the vessels waiting beyond the Bar and by the time he did turn his attention to them it was too late. He would have sailed straight into the range of their guns.

  The next victim was the William commanded by Captain Hewes, an incoming ship on the last leg of its journey from Weymouth. Even if word had managed to spread across the harbour by then not to put out to sea, this unsighted incoming ship would have stood no chance of avoiding the inevitable.138

  This encounter would very likely have been witnessed by fishermen and others in small boats or those working along the shore
and someone would have headed back to the town to raise the alarm. Panic would have started to spread as fast as the news and the remaining eight ships, now locked up in the harbour, would have been a clear reminder to the traders that they were under siege. The nearest known warship would probably have been in Williamsburg. It would take several days to get a message by land to its captain and then it would have been several more days for his ship to reach the area. The rest of the Royal Navy, sparsely spread out across the then known world, would have been of no use.

  Charles Town was sealed off from the outside world. People undoubtedly began worrying about whether the pirates would come ashore and take whatever, or whoever, they wanted. The general population knew nothing of the strategic dangers Blackbeard faced if he entered the harbour. All they knew was that their town was under siege and anything that moved in the waters beyond the harbour was being taken. If the blockade lasted for any length of time the crops that brought prosperity to the growing town would rot in the holds of the stranded ships. At the time, they had no idea whether they would be blockaded for a day, a week, or a month. A war with the local tribes of Native Americans had just ended and they were living through a difficult fragile peace which could change at any moment. ‘What made these misfortunes heavier to them was a long expensive war the colony had had with the natives, what was but just ended, when these robbers infested them.’139 Captain Charles Johnson writing in his History gives us a glimpse of what it was like for the people of the town:

  The whole Province of Carolina, having just before been visited by Vane, another notorious pirate that they abandoned themselves to despair, being in no condition to resist their force. They were eight sail in the harbour ready, for the sea, but none dared to venture out, it being almost impossible to escape their hands. The inward bound vessels were under the same unhappy dilemma, so that the trade of this place was totally interrupted.

  However, the blockade did not last long enough for things to really deteriorate in the town. Blackbeard continued to capture vessels and on the same day the William was taken, two smaller ‘vessels with narrow overhanging sterns’ known as ‘pinks’ were taken and plundered. These were most likely coastal craft as they were roughly the same size as a brigantine or a sloop. It is likely that these coastal craft were carrying goods from South Carolina to Virginia, which would bring Blackbeard’s actions to the attention of Spotswood.

  After the pinks, Johnson states ‘a brigantine with 14 Negroes aboard’ was taken. This was a slave ship from Angola out of Bristol and Blackbeard chose fourteen of the fittest to reinforce his crew. Right after this another coastal craft was plundered out from Boston. Blackbeard’s haul over two days was eight prizes.

  Charles Town was now effectively under siege; with the guns from the Queen Anne’ s Revenge covering the North Channel, nothing was getting in or out.

  Yet, Blackbeard’s only demand to the town council of Charles Town was for a chest of medicine. Here he had the whole of Charles Town in the palm of his hand, at his mercy and yet all he demanded was medicine. Why not more? With the closest Royal Navy warship several days away he could have demanded a substantial amount of wealth from everyone in the town. He had the hostages. On the face of it he had everything on his side. Or did he?

  In Blackbeard’s time the single biggest killer of sailors was not battle but disease. It was not understood and could run rampant through a ship claiming hundreds of lives. Blackbeard’s fleet had been in the Caribbean over the summer where they would have been exposed to tropical diseases such as malaria, typhoid and yellow fever, all lethal. It was estimated that a captain would expect to replenish 50 per cent of his crew by the end of a voyage or return to a home port with barely enough people to man half the guns and sails. As an example, when Captain Kidd was in the Indian Ocean many years earlier, he lost a third of his crew to disease within a week.

  To a pirate captain who relied on overwhelming superiority not only of fear and weapons but of manpower, substantial losses could be disastrous. Some members of the crew are more important to a successful operation or a prolonged voyage than others and perhaps it was these crew members who were suffering. Well-trained replacements for these would have been more difficult to find. Or there is another possibility. Since disease makes no judgement on whom it infects, it cannot be discounted that perhaps Blackbeard himself was suffering. What is the point of massive wealth if you die before you have a chance to enjoy it? His apparent lack of action in avoiding the battle that was eventually to take his life and his ignoring of the warnings that preceded it could imply that he knew he was going to die anyway and that he wanted to go down fighting rather than waste away with disease.

  According to Angus Konstam there is another suggestion; that the pirates needed a medicine chest to combat venereal disease. In those days the primary treatment for syphilis was an injection of mercury. Recently, in an investigation of what could be the shipwreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge a metal urethral syringe was found by marine archaeologists among the debris of the wreckage. It had the recognisable funnel-shaped curved tip which was designed for injecting mercury into the patient to treat venereal diseases. Supporting this theory was the discovery of a high concentration of mercury inside the syringe.140 Of course the wreckage in question may not be Blackbeard’s flagship, but if it is then the syringe had been used before the ship went down, suggesting that the voyage in the Caribbean had been much livelier than most scholars believe.

  Whatever the reason, Blackbeard needed medicine. The theft of possessions from the hostages was probably more to keep his crew satisfied.

  We have already seen that Samuel Wragg was a member of the Charles Town Council and a prominent wealthy citizen and Blackbeard knew this. Wragg was initially chosen by the pirate to take the list and medical supplies to the council because of his wealth and his position in the city and also because he was travelling with his infant son William, whom the pirates would use as a hostage to ensure Wragg did as he was told.141 However, Blackbeard seems to have changed his mind about Wragg. Instead, he chose someone lower down on the social scale in Charles Town, a man known only as Master Marks. He went ashore accompanied by two pirates which some accounts speculate may have included Captain Richards.

  Along with the list of medicines, the men carried a warning from Blackbeard himself which Johnson states clearly in his account:

  If they did not send immediately the chest of medicines and let the pirate ambassadors return without offering any violence to their persons, they would murder all their prisoners, send up their heads to the governor and set the ships they had taken on fire.

  In addition to burning the ships Blackbeard warned he would flatten the town or ‘beat the town about our ears’ which was the phrase used in a letter written after the event.142

  Could the residents of Charles Town put up a fight? It seems unlikely. The militia was more of a defensive nature than an offensive one, as one resident described in a letter written after the event:

  The Town is at present in a very indifferent condition of making much resistance if them or any other enemy should attempt it and that we were very desirous to get them off our coast by fair means, which we could not do otherwise for want of such helps as other government are supply’d with from the Crown.143

  On board the pirate flagship the hostages were in a tense situation. In the hold where they were being kept, men, women and children mixed and worried, perhaps much the same as the African slaves may have done on La Concorde when it was a slave ship before being captured by Blackbeard. Ironically, now the whites were locked up in the same hold that only a few months before would have held several black slaves, not knowing what lay in store for them, not knowing whether they would see home again.

  Above decks, the little pinnace was lowered into the water, carrying Master Marks and the two pirates. As Blackbeard watched the little boat row away into the mouth of the harbour and out of sight he would have been ill at ease. A hardened sea captain,
he did not have the luxury of letting anyone see his uneasiness. He was not a cold-blooded murderer but he had this fearsome reputation which now must have felt like a chain around his neck. He was taking a massive gamble. While he was not above shooting someone if required, it is doubtful whether he would have been prepared to have pistols aimed at the heads of dozens of men, women and children and blast their brains out. If we continue with the possibility that he may have been ill but could not make such a weakness known to his crew, time may have been running out for him too.

  Nor was Blackbeard stupid. He knew that once the alarm had been raised the Council would have sent messengers running in all directions for help, so it was only a matter of time before a warship showed up on the horizon. The Royal Navy was stretched thin along the American coast and depleted after the long War of Spanish Succession but it was still powerful enough to mount an attack against him. The longer he blockaded Charles Town, the more likely this attack would take place. Several warships sailing at him from different directions would not only close off his escape, but also send his crew and ships to a watery grave.

  So he waited, hoping his gamble would pay off. Now that he had gone this far and built such a reputation, he could not simply pull out and sail away somewhere to sulk. He could not carry out his threat and move in on the town, since each day that passed could bring warships closer and he could be blockaded in himself and the warships would also be carrying troops which they would put ashore and could then fire at him from the shoreline. Then there were the batteries of guns on the walls which, if he was blockaded in the harbour, would catch him in the crossfire. He would be a sitting duck.